by Manil Suri
But Gandhiji did not appear, the lights stayed on, the spate was not deterred. I cried, savoring the voluptuous joy of each sob, letting the rivulets run unimpeded down my cheeks, allowing all my bottled-up regret to break free. “Only love,” Dev concluded, flourishing dramatically towards my tears, like a circus ringmaster flaunting the success of a particularly difficult and exotic trick.
“I almost cried myself,” Hema said to me later. “I had no idea you loved him so much.”
chapter six
HEMA WASN’T THE ONLY ONE IMPRESSED BY MY CRYING THAT EVENING. What happened, paradoxically, was that my tears (of happiness, they all nodded) suddenly endeared me to everyone. Mataji forgave, and seemed to forget, my escapade of running away. She started bringing me presents (a tin of talcum powder, a jar of Pond’s cold cream) which I was to keep hidden in my dowry trunk and not let Sandhya see. One sunny day, she even set me up on a charpoy in the courtyard and massaged coconut oil into my hair.
Babuji began saying nice things about the refrigerator, as if afraid that he had hurt my feelings. “Such perfect ice cubes,” he proclaimed, even when they were squat and misshapen because Hema had been too lazy to fill the trays all the way. “Such a pleasing color, white. Mark my words, it will have a long life. Tell your Mr. Godrej that with people like him, the country will be on its way.”
Hema announced that from now on we would be inseparable, and took me around to introduce me to all her friends. “I could see, the very first time I laid eyes on Meera didi, that she was going to be the elder sister I never had.” Even Arya stopped scrutinizing me as he had done that first night in the dark. Before our eyes could meet now, he moved aside politely to let me pass.
The only person who was not moved by my tears (or, for that matter, my dowry) was Sandhya. “What to do?” Hema said, as she chewed on a cube of ice, a habit she had developed, much to everyone’s irritation, soon after the fridge arrived. “Her father wasn’t rich like yours—lost even what little they had in the Partition. Arya found them in the refugee camp. Her mother had managed to hold on to some earrings—so they wrapped them up, calling it her dowry, and sent her off. Couldn’t even afford to buy me a proper sari, let alone get me a necklace or bracelet. Now it’s been eight years and it looks like her womb is constipated as well. She’s lucky we’re not a low-class family, or we’d have thrown her out on the street long ago.”
At first, Sandhya refused to touch food put in the refrigerator, but when that became impractical, it was only the ice she boycotted. Once, when Mataji asked her why she wasn’t using the new pressure cooker to prepare the chickpeas, she ran out of the kitchen, crying. She was careful not to show any outward hostility, only a lingering sullenness, that slipped into her voice and expression every time she had to converse with me.
Each morning after her bath, I would see Sandhya in the courtyard, performing her pooja of Arya. She would swirl an earthenware lamp resting on a round metal thali in a circle before Arya’s face, as one might in front of a picture at a shrine. She would mark his forehead with ash from the platter, and sometimes dab on some vermilion and a moistened grain of rice. She would bend her head and wait for him to color the parting in her hair with a line of the vermilion. Then she would bend even lower to touch his feet—first the right, then the left. She would run the same hand over her head to bless herself as she began to rise.
The first time I saw this pooja, I stood in the kitchen transfixed. The touching of feet was a ritual strictly forbidden by Paji in our house. “All this scraping, all this servility—hasn’t anyone in this country heard of human dignity? Aren’t there enough gods in the temples already to satisfy this national hunger for groveling? We spent two centuries licking the boots of the British—did you ever see them go around prostrating themselves at anyone’s feet?”
Our cousins, of course, had all been taught to perform the ritual at the beginning and end of every visit to show respect to their elders. Paji would yank their heads back up the instant they started to bend. “Did you drop something?” he would demand. “Are you preparing to do push-ups? You can look around on the floor all you want, but I’ll slap you if you touch my feet.”
For a while when we were young, Biji tried to force us to go through the ritual when Paji was not around. “You insolent daughter of an owl, I don’t care what your father says, I’ll break every bone in your body if you don’t touch your grandmother’s feet.” At other times, she would try to cajole us. “It’s a mark of respect, nothing else. What’s the harm in bowing before wisdom, before age?” She would tell us stories from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana to further her argument, such as the one where Bharat kept his brother’s sandals on the throne when Ram was exiled into the forest. “It’s part of our culture, something that’s come down to us from the ages,” she would say. “It’s a dignified custom—you should perform it proudly, not be ashamed.”
Once Paji found out, he quickly put an end to Biji’s efforts. “What can one expect—the children in her village had to wash their parents’ feet and drink the water afterwards in respect. Is that what she’s going to teach you to do next?” During the first years, Paji told us, there was a time when Biji wouldn’t eat anything in the morning until she had touched his feet. “She would tell me I was her lord, her protector, her provider, and she couldn’t start the day without my blessing. When I stopped her, she would pull my shoes out from under the bed and perform her ceremony over them. When I hid those, she started waiting until I was in the bath, to touch my house slippers instead. It was years before I could break her of the habit, before I could keep footwear lying around unlocked again.”
One morning, while I was watching Sandhya, Mataji walked up behind me. “She comes from a very uncomplicated family. She’s a very obedient girl. She hasn’t been able to conceive, the poor thing—you should see all the fasts she keeps for that. I suppose it could be worse, though, she could have given us a series of girls.”
Mataji sighed. “It’s horrible what we women have to go through. How discouraging it is to know one can’t change the world. But perhaps such things arise from a wisdom deeper than ours. Perhaps they’re necessary to keep the world running smoothly. One day soon I hope for her sake that God will hear her prayers. Do you know, we used to do the pooja together every morning before our husbands left for work? I’d come out and the ingredients would be waiting for me, all decorated on a thali—sometimes with hibiscus plucked fresh from the bush outside, sometimes with jasmine—I never knew which it would be. Now, of course, my back’s gone and I can’t even bend.”
Mataji sighed again. “But you’re still young.” She turned me around to examine me, then pulled up the edge of my sari from my shoulders to drape it more modestly over my head. “Dev is your husband now. It’s such a beautiful ritual—why don’t you think about performing it for him as well?”
THE SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS SOON CHANGED. It seemed indecent to keep monopolizing the bedroom Arya had lent us, especially since with the new fridge and radiogram, the front room had become too small for five people to squeeze in. So Dev and I moved out after the first week and spent a few days sleeping under the stars. But it was September, and there were showers lingering around, which sent us running indoors for shelter one night. We ended up sharing the bedroom after that, with Arya and Sandhya on the charpoys, and Dev and I on talais on the floor.
Although the talais were thin enough to be mats rather than mattresses, I decided they were still preferable to the charpoys. For one thing, they didn’t sag; for another, they put an end to the nightly bouncing, which was no longer playful but had become Dev’s way of signaling it was time for sex. The loss of privacy meant that it was too difficult to initiate anything now, a development in which I pretended to share Dev’s disappointment. Once, he did begin to take my clothes off when he thought the other two had gone to sleep. Every rustle seemed to get unbearably magnified in the confines of the room, however, and he had to stop when Sandhya suddenly sat up in bed.
Each night, Arya and Sandhya preceded us into the bedroom, while Dev and I pretended to be occupied outside. We chatted with his parents or listened to the radio, stealing glances at the light visible under the door. As soon as it went out, we sneaked in to our talais in the dark, trying our best to maintain the illusion of privacy. I stopped drinking water after nine and made sure my bladder was completely empty, since it was such an onerous journey to the toilet at night. No matter what the temperature, even when the electricity was out and there was no fan, Sandhya was always swaddled in a sheet, every part of her body meticulously concealed. Although Arya was often awake, sitting up in his undershirt and smoking a cigarette, there were never any good nights exchanged.
About once a week, the light under the door did not go out so readily. Mataji ushered us all into the courtyard on such occasions, and smacked Hema when she wondered aloud if this was the night she would finally become an aunt. We were also led outside when Arya and Sandhya were engaged in a fight. Once, Arya came storming through the courtyard where we sat and strode out of the house, returning only the next afternoon. Sandhya was cocooned as usual when we crept inside, but the next morning I saw her left eye was swollen shut. I was about to say something, but Mataji restrained me, whispering that it was about the lack of a child. She had me get some ice from the refrigerator which she wordlessly handed to Sandhya after wrapping it in a handkerchief.
I was always uncomfortable around my brother-in-law. At night, despite every precaution, our eyes sometimes met in the dark. He would capture my gaze and I would feel steadily drawn in, as if I was at the end of a line he was reeling in. What made me so uneasy was that I could never determine what he was thinking. He seemed to be biding his time before revealing his intentions, his cultivated elusiveness wicking all emotion away from his face. Some mornings, I would hear him rouse himself at 4 a.m. and put on his shirt in the dark. He would be away for about two hours, and go back to sleep when he returned. Dev had never been very specific in his answers to my queries about what Arya did, and I had ceased to ask.
I expected there to be reciprocation with the bedroom arrangement—that we would be the ones invited to go in first some night, giving Hema a chance to extend her innuendos to us as well. But Arya never offered, and Dev never asked—perhaps he was too shy, or too proud, or too deferential. Instead, he started drawing his talai next to mine every night so that we could snuggle together in the dark. I would feel him ease under my sheet and nuzzle his face against the nape of my neck, one arm wrapping around my chest, the other forming a cradle between the pillow and my head.
Sometimes, we would fall asleep in this position. One night, it started to rain, and drops from the windowsill spattered us awake. “Leave it open,” Dev whispered, as I began to get up to close the window. “We’ve endured much worse sleeping outside.” He turned me around so that my face was next to his. Beads of water streaked by to disappear into the pillow between us—I could feel them landing in our hair, on our skin.
Dev kissed me, and I could taste the rain on his lips. He started to peel back the sheet from my body, but stiffened and let go as Arya snorted in his sleep behind him.
“One day we’ll have a place of our own. Soon, I promise.” An engine whistled in the distance as if to endorse his words. “We’ll move to Bombay, that’s what we’ll do. I’ve always dreamt of going there. We’ll ask Babuji to get us a ticket from his railway quota for the Frontier Mail.”
I imagined reclining on one of the green cushioned first-class seats, the kind that turned into sleepers at night. Waving goodbye to Hema and Arya and everyone else on the platform, as the train eased smoothly out of Nizamuddin. “We could go see the monsoon,” I said. “I’ve heard that the rain falls in sheets there.” From somewhere came the rumble of bogies picking up speed, or perhaps it was just the sound of quickening rain.
“And I could meet all the movie music directors in their studios—perhaps even the same ones Saigal must have auditioned for, years ago. If only I could get them to hear me just once, I know our future would be made.”
Dev began caressing my hair, gathering the beads of water between his fingers and sliding them down towards my shoulders. He smoothed out the strands sticking to my forehead, pushing them away from my eyes. “Of course it’s just a dream. It’s such an expensive city, there’d be no way to live.”
“We could manage somehow,” I said carelessly, turning my head upside down to face the window. Through the cascade of raindrops bouncing off the sill, I could see the Frontier Mail on its freedom run. Its whistle sounding joyously, its engine barreling through fields and villages, its long black plume of smoke unwinding against the sky like calligraphy.
“Perhaps if we could get a flat there, it wouldn’t be so bad,” Dev said, as he squeezed my tresses dry between his palms. He arranged them in a sunburst around my head and looked down at me lovingly. A flash passed over his face, as if an idea had just struck him, as if inspiration had just bubbled up to the surface. “You could ask your father for help.”
THE FIRST TIME MATAJI let me speak to my parents was the morning after I cried over Dev’s song. “You’re very lucky,” she said to me. “How many people in the whole of Delhi must have a telephone at home? When I was married, it wasn’t until I went back three months later that I heard my mother’s voice.” She pulled out an anna coin from a pouch under her sari and gave it to Hema. “It’s four paise for a call from what I can remember. Be sure to bring me back two paise worth of salt.”
The telephone was in the ration shop, in the other direction from the station. Hema scampered ahead to a jewelry stall. “Look, red bangles, twelve for an anna—we could get four each if you decided to forgo your call.” She lost interest in them when I told her she could dial the number, something she had not done before.
Biji answered the phone. She had never quite managed to get the hang of the receiver, and her voice rose and faded as she tried speaking into each end. Hema crowded in close to me—having dialed the number, she now felt entitled to listen in on the call.
“My daughter, my Meera,” Biji cried, bursting into tears once she recognized who was on the phone. I felt a weight in my chest as I heard her weep, but also a detachment, as if the physical distance between us had opened up an emotional separation as well. “The house is so empty now. All of a sudden I feel so old.” It was true, I realized with a twinge—Biji did sound strangely aged over the phone.
Paji was composed and formal. He wanted to know if the refrigerator had arrived, and how the radiogram played. The pressure cooker, he cautioned me, could be dangerous if the lid was not locked securely in place. He hoped Dev and his parents were in good health and asked me to convey his regards to them. In turn, I asked him to give my love to Sharmila. I was about to hang up when I remembered Hema standing next to me, all ears. “And don’t worry about me,” I added. “They treat me really well—everyone’s so caring here.”
By now, Mataji had confirmed what Hema had claimed—it was considered too inauspicious for me to visit my parents so soon after the marriage. “Settle in first, make this home your own, and then you can even go stay a few nights,” she said. When I broached the subject of having Biji come over instead, Mataji explained that in their family, the first such visit was only permitted on special festival days. “We’ll have them come on Karva Chauth next month. Such a big day for you—the first time you’ll be keeping a fast for Dev. Don’t worry, it’ll be here before you know it.”
She let me telephone them every four days. (How long would it take, I wondered, to use up the twenty thousand rupees from Paji and one rupee from Sharmila at this rate?) Hema always accompanied me, and told me how jealous her friends were getting about all the calls she’d been dialing. “In addition to a fridge and a radiogram and a pressure cooker, I’m going to ask Babuji to include a telephone in my dowry.”
A few times, when she insisted, I let Hema say hello to my parents. “I’m not sure exactly who that was, but she
chatters a lot,” Paji commented.
One morning, Biji didn’t come to the phone. Paji told me she’d been crying since morning over Roopa’s move to the east coast. “Ravinder’s posting came through to the naval base in Visakhapatnam. They’re leaving this Sunday. I’ll tell them you said goodbye.”
“Visakhapatnam!” Dev exclaimed when I told him. “But that’s on the other side of the country.” He looked so crestfallen that I had to suppress the shiver of exhilaration I felt. “Poor Roopa,” he said, and slowly shook his head. “Look what you’ve done to yourself.”
I was never able to bring up Dev’s Bombay suggestion to Paji on the phone. Initially, I dismissed the idea of asking for help as preposterous. Surely after everything he had spent for my dowry, Paji would simply laugh at the request. Not with warmth, either, I told Dev, but with rage. “What about the twenty thousand in cash Paji gave?” I asked. “That’s supposed to be for us—surely it should be enough for a flat, even in Bombay?”
Dev evaded my queries about the money as long as he could. He finally disclosed that the family had asked to borrow it to keep aside for Hema’s wedding. “You’ve seen yourself how these dowry matters work. Just think of it—Sandhya didn’t even bring in anything. Could someone like Babuji ever afford a daughter’s marriage on his salary alone?”